Creating Visual Components with JavaBeans
Sun Takes The Web Techniques Challenge
By Ray Valdes
While the Web's simplified user interfaces and the ease with which they are created have contributed to its overwhelming popularity, they've also limited the capabilities of Web applications. To create more robust applications, developers are beginning to augment pages with software components, black boxes that allow for the inclusion of logic and functionality without requiring programming.
The two prevailing component technologies at the moment are Sun's JavaBeans and Microsoft's ActiveX, both of which have garnered many inches of ink in the trade press. Here at Web Techniques, we wondered: How easy are these components to create and use? What does a real-world example of a component look like? What does the source code look like? How long does it take to write?
To this end, the editors of Web Techniques posed a small challenge to vendors. We came up with an example of a visual component that a Web-site implementor might want to use on a Web page. As it turns out, only the developers at Sun Microsystems were able to submit a finished component by our deadline. In this article, I'll take a brief look at the history of component technology, describe the specification we presented to the vendors, and present the JavaBean written by the Sun development team.
The "Big-Applet" Era
First, a bit of history. The simplicity of user interface in the early days of the Web soon chafed on more ambitious developers.
